from Which Once Had Been Meadow

Ann Jäderlund

As it is split from the leaf this blank leaf
As it is split from the meadow this blank meadow
As it is split from the poppy this red poppy

(Amor)

 

As it is my meadow
As it is my leaf
As it is my lake
As it is my style
As it is my ray







Do the buds bud in spring
Do the buds bud
Is the grass dead
Is he toying with me







A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Painful voyage
into the lilac
He fills you with his fluid
Tears off a flower
Sucks out the sweetness
Painful voyage
Soon he will burst the entire cluster

Microscopic black flies
Will loosen and fall
Soon they will have no home
Stamen
Pistils
Heavy red
Violet
Against his leather gullet
Which is uncinched
A skeleton of wood and evil
Lonely brown thread
Soon he will burst the entire cluster







Iodine

Unfold the leaves
Thrust into the core. There is no core
When you are in the middle
Thrust in between the pitiful leaves
There is no rose. When you are in the rose
Sour folds
There is no reed
When you come with fluid
There is no
fluid,
Giovanni







Nerve System

It is a city
Or a city inside the actual city
Along the streets. With sunken shores
You wanted to pick these for me
receptacles that we need
But I cried,
These are not the ones
During the soul’s wandering

Could I immediately measure and sense
Them against my lowermost
It is a branching







Reply

I go to you in the monastery
The anesthesia hardens the walls
Far over there the building is murky
I arrange my desolate rays
I place all the rays
All in one row
Do you not stand next to me
I loved the small rays
It is always so empty
Let me fill that empty space
It would also hurt
to swathe one’s arms

The stars blink. Console the playmate
Now that he always comes home
As if they wanted to awaken an inner life
On this side
The building is a block
I love you
And in its undestroyed truth

It is the same with me as with the garden
Can it split us apart

translated from the Swedish by Johannes Göransson